Oregon State Senator Kevin Mannix - Should Oregon end catch and release for felons?

Oregon’s catch and release policies are under renewed scrutiny as critics argue serious offenders are being released before ever appearing before a judge. Should the state overhaul its pretrial release system in the name of public safety?

Kevin Mannix is an Oregon state representative from Salem and a chief supporter of the proposed Oregon Crimefighting Act. He joins the show to discuss Initiative Petition 50, efforts to require court arraignments for felony suspects before release, and the broader debate over bail reform, jail capacity, and crime policy in Oregon.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome back to the Lawrence Larson Show. It's a pleasure to be with you on the Radio Northwest Network serving Oregon, Washington, and Idaho with honestly provocative talk on a daily basis. And let's consider the dirty little secret out there that people like car thieves, identity thieves, and even felons are back on Oregon streets oftentimes before the ink on their booking documents has even dried. So is it finally time to end catch and release and put judges back in charge? That is, if the judges are willing to actually do the job.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Thank you, Lars. Good afternoon.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Good afternoon. Have I misdescribed any of this? This is the situation we find ourselves in that felons get back on the streets quickly.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

You have not misdescribed it. It's totally true, and it's it's a dirty little secret that was passed during COVID, and the excuse was well, we don't want to overcrowd the jails. We want people to be dose distance, so we're going to let a lot of people out. And the law that was passed by the legislature, and I want to add, before I came back, it was before I came back in 2023, there's a 146 felonies where the presumption is you will be released on your own recognizance. That means without bail, as soon as you were booked. And every county has to have a release officer whose job is to release you. And the tradition, the old way you do it is you're supposed to be arraigned in front of a circuit court judge who looks at the charges, the evidence, your record, whether or not you're going to show up for trial, public safety, and the judge can decide in some cases to say, I'll release you on your own recognizance. You look like an otherwise okay person, or no, I'm going to set bail, or I'm going to keep you in jail until trial. They also severely limited the power of the judges to set bail. So the Oregon Crime Fighting Act Initiative Petition 50 says, wait a minute, we're going back to old school. You get arrested for a felony or a class A misdemeanor. You will wait until you are arraigned in front of a judge. Could be a day or two. The judge will look at all of this and decide what's going to happen to you. Not an officer, and they're called, by the way, release officers. Go figure that. Come on, Lars. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

So Kevin, the mindset is crazy. Look, I've complained about the choice of judges in both Oregon and Washington because I think it's a setup. I mean, most of the judges are appointed by a governor, a Democrat governor, and then they run for re-election, usually unopposed, because lawyers know better than to try to run against the sitting judge. The sitting judge wins most of the time. But at least there you could argue the public has something to say about it. When it comes to a release officer, they're not answerable to the public at all, are they?

SPEAKER_01 3:08

They are not. And by the way, I agree with you about reforming the judicial selection process. That is another topic I will work on. But in the meantime, at least these judges are in an elected position. And by the way, if they screw up, we have the recall. We can actually recall a judge who is screwing up. And I'd say I know that's hard, but what I'm saying is at least we have a system in place to hold people accountable, and we can be watching these judges. And I do think many of the judges want to be able to do the responsible thing, and they're frustrated because they've got a they're not even given the opportunity to decide whether to set bail because the person's already been released by a release officer. So our initiative petition 50 changes all that. And and by the way, since the counties are tight for funds, we say the state pays for it. The state should pay for the first lake.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

That seems fair. So how close are you to getting the signatures you need to put it on the ballot? And when will voters likely get to vote on it?

SPEAKER_01 4:05

We're six weeks away from a July 2 deadline to get our signatures. I'd say we're halfway there. I'm hoping people would go to notaxoregon.com. That's where the Oregon Freedom Coalition is uh has centered the drive to help us with this. They're also helping us with the repeal of the death tax. And uh notaxoregon.com. You go there, you can find out where to sign the petitions, how to acquire petitions. And uh we also have our own website, which is the Oregon uh Anticrime Alliance.org, where you can get signal signature petitions and uh you can get other petitions to gather signatures. So it's an active effort. And tomorrow is the day where the voters get to push back on the gas tax and transportation fees. That all came out of a petition process. Well, here's another petition process where we get to push back against uh this how do I say it, bureaucratic stranglehold on the public safety system. And by the way, I tried three times since I've come back to get the legislature to address this.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

And they won't do it. Will they?

SPEAKER_01 5:13

They have not allowed it to happen.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

The Democrats want criminals to be able to walk out. Let me ask you a couple of other things. Tomorrow, it looks as though voter turnout is very low in the one big Democrat stronghold of Multnomah County. Any guesses on how Measure 120 is going to go? Because I I I've been saying optimistically, I think the uh tax increase, that's 120, is going to go down with a no vote of 70 percent to 30 percent yes. Am I being too optimistic?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

I do not think you were too optimistic, and I do think that what I call suburban and rural Oregon around the state, these folks are especially incensed about how the Democrat supermajority pushed this through, and they want to push back because instead of finding savings in how we operate the Department of Transportation, all it was is well, let's just raise the price, raise the price, raise the price. So the pushback has been considerable. I remember, I hate to say 15 so years ago, uh, we had another tax increase on the ballot, it got a 68% no vote. So let's aspire to that.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Well, the other thing I want to add, you're a lawyer, and one of the ways that criminals have been getting out is they say, Well, we don't have enough defense attorneys. We're just critically short of them, which I think is hogwash. But if a judge said, Oh, this defendant doesn't have an attorney, Mr. Mannix, you're an attorney, step up and he can assign you to the case, can't he?

SPEAKER_01 6:44

It is possible. I do want to do that. Then why are they doing that? We have we have more defense attorneys in the state than we have prosecutors. That's another dirty little secret. And the defense attorneys are paid by the state. The prosecutors, except the elected DA himself or herself, they have to be paid by the counties. So it's tough on the counties in terms of their budgets. And I am pushing for a reform where we insist that no, everybody does need to have an attorney because the constitution requires it. And we attorneys are all obligated to fulfill that. And if there are not any paid defense attorneys available, then the bar is going to have to step up because nobody should be released because an attorney has not been assigned.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Well, the other thing is, Kevin, I'd like to see attorneys only where the Constitution requires it. My understanding is Oregon's system actually assigns attorneys for cases that even the federal, uh the federal constitution does not require. And we also give a lot of things like post-conviction relief, not required by the Constitution. I'd like to see that cut out. Then I think we could have enough savings to pay for all of it. That is Kevin Mannix. He is a Republican from Salem. He is running for re-election. He's being challenged by Art Stevenson. He's also running Initiative Petition 50, the Oregon Crime Fighting Act. Back in a moment. You're listening to the Lars Larson Show.